Monday the 20th of Apr - Roadtrip to Gent

Today was a good day. Richard, Mar and I drove to Gent to visit NLP practitioners. The mind requires as much healing as the body. Doctors can work on Mar’s physical well being, she’s working on her mental state of mind. Most of you know Mar. She doesn’t shy away from a challenge. If anything, it sparks rebellion in her and makes her even more contentious. So why not channel that with even more positive thinking. Today, she even meditated for 10 whole minutes. Again, if you know Mar, you’ll know, thinking of nothing for even a second is a great accomplishment. I’m so proud! I’m usually the one to think of nothing.

While she speaks with these people, her team of personal assistants, Richard, Dad and I work on logistics. Booking flights to Perugia, accomodation, speaking with Mar’s Insurance Company, HR, responding to emails and calls of concerned and very helpful friends.

The trip didn’t go without a couple of dramatic moments. The day before, halfway to Belgium, the wife of our Italian contact calls. I don’t know her and it took me a while to place her over the phone. She impresses upon us the gravity and urgency of Mar’s situation. She says they spoke to Dr Martelli. If we want Mar to live, we need to leave NOW. TONIGHT. Not a moment to lose. I’m trying to make sense of this conversation. She insists. Mar is going to die if we don’t leave immediately. She says we need to understand our priorities. I try to clarify…What exactly did Dr Martelli say? “Paula, I already told you 5 times what he said, your sister will die if she doesn’t come straight away…”The conversation ends rather abruptly.

So here we are…I’m shaken…Mar’s indignant. As the protective older sister, of course her first worry is my reaction to this. Typical Mar. Richard’s driving. Calm. We decide to turn back…We’re not at all amused with this turn of events. We’re very disappointed because her mind deserves attention…We sanity check with our father. He received a similar phone call a few moments ago. He agrees there may be some exaggeration on their part. You think? We should continue our journey. We stop at the Rotterdam airport to compose ourselves and decide on our next step. After a lot of cussing (Italian style) our Dutch sobriety kicks in and we reverse again. Through out, Richard remains patient, reasonable, with the right dose of humour to lighten the moment…Good Old Richard…

So where were we? Ah yes…Positive thinking….In that spirit, let’s draw some valuable lessons from this experience:

Lesson 1: We will not be told what to do by others, no matter how well intended. Mara ultimately decides what SHE wants. Counseling is always welcome but ultimately we’re here to support HER.
Lesson 2: Be thankful for great friends, patient, stable, humorous.
Lesson 3: Being half Dutch ain’t all that bad.

After a few detours - our NLV (Navigating Lady Voice) while friendly isn’t very cooperative, she may not have appreciated Richard’s one too many sarcastic “Yes Dear” - we finally make it to our hotel around 10.30pm.

We’re starving and tired. The bar’s still open so we order hamburgers. They’re very chewy. We complain, the waiter all too readily agrees. Interesting bit of useless information but did you know the Marriott imports all its burger meat from America? Yuck…Mar plans to write a letter of complaint. Then again, we should know better then to order burgers in such a culinary city as Gent. Serves us right.

In spite of the hurdles…It was a good day. Tomorrow we leave for Italy. It’s going to be another long day. Another adventure.